News, Views and Analysis

Stacy Bonds: Ottawa prosecutors keep on digging

Do you think it will cheer anyone up that Matt Humphreys, the Crown who ploughed ahead with the malicious prosecution of Stacy Bonds, was only following orders? That the decision was made by a “case management team” and other senior Crown attorneys?

Two tests, you say, must be met before the Crown will proceed: there must be a “reasonable prospect of conviction” and proceeding must be “in the public interest.” Charges are withdrawn, you have the sheer effrontery to claim, if those tests aren’t met.

Just whom are you trying to kid, Ms. Bair? Do you think we’re all stupid?

Where was that “reasonable prospect of conviction?” A judge took one look at the video of Bonds being brutalized, and tossed the case out the window. He called it a “travesty,” remember?

And “in the public interest?” I’m a member of the public, Ms. Bair. So are the hundreds of people who have sent angry emails to Humphreys, who have deluged the Ottawa police with outraged commentary, who have vented in the media.

You didn’t act in the “public interest,” Ms. Bair. You acted in the police’s interest. And with your ill-advised comments, you’ve brought the administration of justice into further disrepute. You’ve made your office look as though it’s populated by drooling yokels.

You know that phrase, “the whole world is watching?” I’m presently in Italy: the animals dressed in Ottawa police uniforms who savaged a 100-lb. Black woman made the national news here.

But you keep on digging, and digging, and digging. The Ottawa Citizen linked very early on to the entire text of the judgement that brought this miserable case into the public spotlight. More than a few of us have read it from beginning to end. But you claim the Citizen accounts have been a “nuanced departure” from what the judge actually said.

Prove it, Ms. Bair. Be specific. Or have the common decency to admit it—your office goofed, badly. The knee-jerk pro-police stance of the Crown just didn’t work for you this time.

We’ve seen the video. We’ve heard what the judge had to say. You haven’t impressed any of us one bit with your witless public prevarications.

You’re halfway to China by now, Ms. Bair. Lose the shovel before there’s a cave-in. And at least try to pretend, if only for form’s sake, that you’re interested in justice.